


Kindred Spirit

by Empatheia



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, Gap Filler, Interlude, May/December Relationship, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 09:10:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6512218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empatheia/pseuds/Empatheia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Filling in the blanks as to how Quistis knew Martine "quite well."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kindred Spirit

**Author's Note:**

> Sparked by a conversation I had with [Luna Manar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luna_Manar/profile) a while back about FFVIII crackships. This has long been a favourite of mine, and I never bought the idea that Martine was on familiar personal terms with her way back when she was a tiny G-Garden junior cadet, so this is my personal headcanon as to how it went instead. Please forgive any errors or inconsistencies with canon; I haven't played the game in a while and my memory is... not the best.
> 
> Note: this is tagged F/M, but it's sort of pre-ship more than anything. There's no kissing or anything else untoward. I just didn't feel right about labelling it gen because it's very much a shipfic at heart, and if I were to write a sequel there would absolutely be kissing in that. So.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2017/09/10: As of now, the aforementioned sequel has been attached to the end of this work as a second chapter.

“You realize you’re going to have to dance at least once,” Xu murmured in her ear. “You might as well get it over with. Just pick someone you don’t recognize; you’ll probably never see them again anyway.”

 

Quistis gnawed her lip and scanned the crowd. The faces blurred together a little. Perhaps she had fortified her nerves a little too enthusiastically.

 

It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to dance. She understood the theory of it, she could execute the steps in time with the music, and her form was flawless. She was an excellent dancer, really. She just couldn’t... _dance_. What small grace she possessed inevitably drained right out of her the moment she put her hand in her partner’s.

 

This was her third graduation ball, and she seemed to be getting worse over the years rather than better, somehow.

 

“Why can’t I just dance with you?” she said, a little plaintively. “At least then I won’t have to look at some stranger’s face while I embarrass myself.”

 

“Neither of us know how to lead,” Xu reminded her. “I thought the idea was to _avoid_ embarrassment.”

 

“I could figure it out,” Quistis muttered, but she’d already lost and she knew it. She sighed and looked around for a waiter to take her empty champagne flute.

 

Before she found one, Xu suddenly straightened beside her, reached out and neatly plucked the flute away, leaving her with nothing to do with her hands. “Heads up, girl.”

 

Someone was approaching her. Very clearly approaching _her_ , not Xu; he nodded his head to Xu briefly to acknowledge her presence, then fixed his eyes on Quistis and kept them there.

 

She assessed him.

 

It was hard to get a read on his age. At first glance, from a distance, she had thought fifty or so, but she revised that quite drastically downwards as he came close enough for her to get a good look at his face. It was a thing built of sharp angles and hollowed planes, which gave it a severity that made him look older than he was, but there were only faint wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and his pale receding hairline was the fault of bad genes, not advanced years. His back and shoulders were very straight, still powerful with youth.

 

He wore fine leather boots and a royal blue frock coat edged rather ostentatiously with gold, but the way he wore it made it look more dignified than flashy.

 

Much closer to forty than fifty, she decided. Perhaps even still in his late thirties. Not particularly handsome, but then, she wasn’t looking.

 

He looked vaguely familiar to her, but she couldn't place him at all. She hated that feeling.

 

“I have been informed,” he said in a low, polished voice, casting a telling glance across the floor towards Headmaster Cid, “that I am obligated to dance at least once before I am allowed to make my escape.”

 

“That is the rule, unfortunately,” Quistis confirmed with open sympathy.

 

Xu surreptitiously kicked her ankle. Quistis flinched, but didn’t retaliate immediately. There would be time for that later.

 

“I thought,” said the man, “I would find someone who looked equally unwilling and see if we couldn’t muddle through it together. How about it?”

 

Despite herself, she smiled, and he answered it with a slightly lopsided one of his own. It looked a little strange on his dour face, a little incongruous, but the overall effect was quite nice. A bit like the moon shining momentarily through an impressive bank of clouds.

 

“Deal,” she said, and held out her hand.

 

Her practical boots were not well suited to ballroom dancing, but it was tradition for SeeDs to attend in uniform, and various protests had yet to overturn that expectation. Some girls managed to look graceful in the square-shouldered jackets, straight-cut skirts and low-heeled boots. She wasn’t sure how. The SeeD uniform was regal and imposing, and she liked that about it, but at times like this she envied the civilian guests a little. Many of the women were decked out in gorgeous little cocktail dresses and strings of pearls and tiny, delicate heels which were no doubt quite painful to wear but undeniably suited the mirrorlike dance floor much better.

 

Feeling simultaneously over- and under-dressed, she followed his lead out into the throng.

 

“Martine Dodonna,” he said by way of introduction.

 

“Ah!” she exclaimed, snapping her fingers. “Headmaster! I can't believe I didn't recognize you. It must be the new coat. Very sharp, by the way.”

 

“Thank you?” he said, looking a little lost.

 

“I studied at Galbadia Garden when I first enlisted,” she clarified, “for a few months, before transferring out to join the SeeD program. I saw you from a distance a few times, but never had the honour of meeting you in person, being a lowly junior cadet at the time. I've been back three times since for various reasons, but I always dealt with your adjutant. I had the distinct impression that you weren't the type to attend social functions. Pardon my presumption.”

 

“I don’t, when I can avoid it,” he said, scowling briefly and waving off her apology. “Kramer can be... obstinate.”

 

Quistis snorted, then schooled her expression to studied blandness. “Far be it from me to speak ill of my esteemed leader. Quistis Trepe, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

 

“Likewise. You must be relieved to be done with your exams,” he said.

 

“Actually,” she said, blushing in advance of what she knew was going to sound like boasting, “I passed my exams two years ago. I’ve just been promoted to instructor.”

 

He turned back to look at her, thin eyebrows raised. “Forgive me, I’m not very good at guessing ages, but—”

 

“I’m seventeen,” she provided. “Graduated at fifteen.”

 

“That makes you one of the youngest in history,” he said. Not trying to flatter her, just stating the fact of the matter.

 

The blush deepened despite her best efforts. “So I’m told.”

 

Mercifully, the band rescued her, striking up the first notes of a familiar waltz. He turned the rest of the way to face her head-on, and she put her free hand on his stately shoulder as he settled his at her waist. She braced herself for five minutes of awkward booted stomping around, as experience had led her to expect.

 

That failed to happen.

 

Unlike her various previous partners, he didn’t ask grace of her, and that made a world of difference. His leadership didn’t try to turn her into a spangled feather twirling about in his arms, like the civilian ladies in their airy little dresses; he made the dance feel almost like a marching drill, an exercise in power and precision.

 

She could work with that.

 

When the waltz was over, they made a dignified exit back towards where Xu was waiting and watching with her eyebrows obnoxiously high on her forehead.

 

Quistis was a little flushed, and to her embarrassment, breathing a little hard. Martine showed no sign of effort at all, which made her embarrassment worse.

 

“You’re an excellent dancer,” he told her, and again, it wasn’t flattery or something to be argued with. Just a statement of fact.

 

“Thank you,” she said, almost believing it when it came from him. That had indeed been an excellent dance. In her opinion, at least. “So are you.”

 

He barked a laugh. “You’re the first to say so,” he said, looking almost embarrassed. “I’ve been told I’m too... forceful.”

 

“Suited me just fine,” Quistis said honestly.

 

He swept her a bow. “Thank you sincerely for helping me fulfill my obligations,” he said. “Now Kramer can’t complain anymore.”

 

“Neither can my friend here, so I owe you thanks in turn.”

 

They smiled at each other for a moment longer. Then Quistis ducked a quick but point-perfect curtsy and returned to Xu’s side. She could hear Martine walking away behind her.

 

Xu caught her by the upper arms as soon as she came within reach and pulled her into the lee of a pillar, hissing “What was _that?_ ” under her delighted breath.

 

Quistis frowned at her. “What was what?”

 

“That! Out there! You made everyone else look like they were barely moving. I thought you were going to run into other couples like five times. That was.... That was _intense._ I didn’t know you had it in you.”

 

Valiantly, Quistis did her best not to blush again. It mostly worked. “I guess it’s true what the instructor said, about partners needing to suit each other.”

 

Xu’s eyebrows climbed most of the way up off her forehead.

 

Quistis stepped on her foot.

 

“What was that for?” Xu asked, aggrieved.

 

“Payback.”

 

“Do you think he’ll come ask you again?” Xu said instead of protesting that, because she knew damn well she’d had it coming.

 

Quistis shrugged. “I don’t see why he would.” He’d fulfilled his obligation, and now he could bow out politely like he’d wanted to. Quistis had to stay until it wrapped up — all the SeeDs did, as they were nominally its hosts — but he was probably halfway to the gate already.

 

Or... still here, talking to Cid? She spotted him across the floor, leaning down to talk to her headmaster with a rather impressive scowl on his face. Cid wasn’t very intimidating, but there was something about him that made him hard to say no to outright. People were often reduced to jumping through increasingly awkward hoops looking for a way out and not finding one. He got what he wanted in the end more often than not.

 

After a couple of minutes, as the current number was winding down, the conversation apparently came to an end, but Martine didn’t leave. He stalked aggressively over to a pillar and leaned against it with his arms folded in a manner that almost, but not quite, came across as petulant.

 

Xu followed her line of sight and grinned. “Go on, then, go save him.”

 

Quistis mumbled a protest, but her feet were already moving.

 

He looked up as she approached and immediately looked about 50% less put-out. “Miss Trepe,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

 

“Did you get corralled into staying for another dance?” she asked. “I saw the look on your face, and you obviously haven’t ducked out like I think you intended to, so I figured something must’ve happened.”

 

“He insisted that I stay and ‘enjoy’ the party a while longer,” Martine gritted. “I’ve 'enjoyed' the party quite enough, in my apparently irrelevant opinion, but when he doesn’t want to hear something you might as well be shouting into the wind.”

 

“I know exactly what you mean,” Quistis said fervently, having tried to make a number of suggestions since becoming a SeeD that had been very blithely ignored in favour of the status quo. “If you can’t get out of it, though, you might as well make the best of it.”

 

He inclined his head a fraction. “Meaning?”

 

“I don’t hate the idea of one more dance,” she said.

 

So they had another, and then another, and then retired to the balcony to talk for a long time under the gentle spring moonlight. To any civilian listening in, their topics of choice might have seemed strange talk for what was meant to be a celebration, but he ran a Garden and she was a SeeD, so it was very natural that they spoke mostly of the business of war.

 

He preferred the tactical and political ends of things to the nitty-gritty, whereas she would much rather have her boots on the battlefield than have to worry about intrigue, but they had enough knowledge in common to inform each other rather than fail to communicate.

 

The conversation survived the initial stages, then thrived. She hadn’t talked with anyone like this in... years, perhaps. Not even Xu. She and Xu had too _much_ in common, so that lengthy in-depth discussions were almost always unecessary.

 

It was nice. She liked being listened to like she had something worth saying, and she liked what he had to say in turn, though some of it was a little more hawkish than she was entirely comfortable with. The business of war was not beautiful, and she knew better than to think she’d already come to terms with the worst of it.

 

When the fête began to wind down indoors, he thanked her and bid her a good night and swept another bow, then vanished into the crowd as it filed out.

 

Not at all the miserable evening she had expected. She smiled.

 

*

One week later

 

*

 

The courier from Balamb town's postal center dropped an envelope on her desk and raced out, perpetually behind schedule. Quistis frowned. She hadn’t been expecting a letter. She had no contacts outside Garden who were at all likely to write to her, and anyone within Garden would not have needed the services of the courier.

 

Peeling it open, she scanned its contents with growing surprise.

 

*

 

_Dear Ms. Trepe,_

 

_I hope this letter finds you in good health. I know this may seem somewhat strange, but I felt compelled to write to you in order to thank you again._

 

_I have been coerced into attending several of those abysmal affairs over the past dozen years, and they have inevitably been miserable. I am not built for parties, as you correctly deduced, likely because you seem to be of a similar sort yourself._

 

_Through your skill on the dance floor and your quick mind for conversation, you turned something to be endured into something to be enjoyed, and I am grateful._

 

_You are a remarkable young woman, and I foresee a bright future for you. (It's a pity we lost a talent like you to B-Garden.) If there’s ever anything I can do to facilitate said future, send word, and if it’s in my power I’ll see it done._

 

_I owe you one, Ms. Trepe, and I never forget my debts._

 

_Martine Dodonna_

 

_*_

 

Hardly pausing to think about it, she rooted through her drawers until she found a serviceable sheet of looseleaf and a pen.

 

*

 

_Dear Headmaster Dodonna,_

 

_Please, it’s Quistis. Only my students call me Ms. Trepe._

 

_Secondly, you don’t owe me anything! You saved me from a miserable evening, just as I apparently saved you, so we’re even._

 

_That said, thank you for the compliments. I would return them, but I think I might embarrass myself. It was an honour and a joy to spend the evening with you. If you come again next year, might I be so bold as to request that you save the first dance for me?_

 

_Quistis Trepe_

 

*

 

She caught the courier on his way out and sent it off.

 

Martine’s reply came mere days later:

 

*

 

_Dear Quistis,_

 

_If I am to call you by your name, you must call me by mine. It’s only fair._

 

_And as far as I’m concerned, you can have every dance._

 

_Martine_

 

*

 

Over the following months, they exchanged more letters of increasing length and familiarity, until she was treating her letters to him almost as an interactive journal and he was doing much the same.

 

She entertained him with her stories from the classroom, of fire spells gone awry and rascally cheaters not quite sly enough to get away with it. He told her all about the travails of running a military school the size of Galbadia Garden and all the political knottiness that came along with being financially and otherwise beholden to the nation’s government.

 

Though the details of missions were classified, she told him what she could, and he shared gossip from Galbadia and its neighbouring nations whenever he thought it might interest her.

 

They weren’t friends, exactly, but they were something substantial, and she didn’t have many substantial things in her life. She was grateful for this one, and looked forward to every letter with warmth in her heart.

 

Xu, of course, was insufferable about it.

 

*

 

One year later

 

_*_

 

Quistis looked down at her field boots, idly inspecting them while the champagne settled in. She hadn't had the time or inclination to go dress-shopping before the ball, so she was wearing her regular outfit, which was almost a dress. Close enough. Better than her dress uniform, at least, if she had to dance. One small privilege afforded to instructors over the rank and file.

 

Said boots were getting quite worn around the edges; she’d had them two years, and the last year had been very active, what with all the field exercises and exams and missions she’d been in charge of. She would have to buy or requisition a new pair soon and spend a few painful weeks breaking them in, regrettably. These were so comfortable now that she barely felt them, but if the sole came peeling off halfway through a battle she’d be in trouble.

 

There was nothing for it. She’d talk to the quartermaster in a few days, after the post-party cleanup was dealt with. She’d be back in the field more than ever now that she was no longer an instructor.

 

It hurt to think about, a lot, but in a strange way it was also a relief. She’d known from the beginning that it wasn’t a good fit for her, however much she had wanted it to be. Cid giving her the position had been an honour, and she’d been so grateful, but now she saw it for the lesson on leadership it was. Acing exams wasn’t everything. Being cool under pressure wasn’t enough. She had to connect to the people around her and bring out the best in them, and she couldn’t.

 

She still had so much to learn, about so many things.

 

“Stop staring at the floor, you look like a wallflower,” Xu said, elbowing her.

 

Quistis elbowed her back. “I _am_ a wallflower. I’m waiting for the champagne trays to go around enough times to make the idea of dancing tolerable.”

 

At the moment, she was watching Squall and an astonishingly beautiful black-haired girl soar around the floor and feeling awkward and bitter about it. She had asked Squall for a dance earlier, willing to soldier through the embarrassment for any chance to get closer, but he’d turned her down flat without even seeming to realize how badly it stung her. He wasn’t looking at her. He never really looked at anyone. She’d hoped she might be different, eventually, if she were persistent enough, but that thin sliver of hope was withering in front of her eyes. Squall was looking at that black-haired girl he’d just met like... like she was _real_ to him, already, in a way that Quistis still wasn’t after years of being in his proximity.

 

Her strange and tangled feelings for or towards Squall had only gotten stranger and more tangled over the last year, and she was about fed up with it. What was she even hoping for? She could barely hold up a conversation with him, even at the best of times. She could hardly see herself in an actual relationship with him.

 

She just wanted to be _closer_ , somehow, so much closer than this, and to her great frustration, she couldn’t seem to let that long-standing desire go. Every single thing she did to purge it from her heart only seemed to make it stronger. It was tiring, but she was out of ideas.

 

“Want me to tell you who she is?” Xu offered, watching the black-haired girl bend over Squall’s arm like they’re done it a hundred times. Xu seemed to know everything long before she had any right to know it. She was much better at the “spy” part of their job description than the “soldier” part.

 

“No,” Quistis lied.

 

Xu, of course, told her anyway. “I hear she’s the daughter of some Galbadian bigshot. Ran away from home last year and started working with a resistance faction in Timber. Apparently Seifer got her an invitation, expecting that he’d be here to make introductions... obviously that didn’t work out so well, but it looks like she’s doing all right.”

 

Quistis didn’t even ask where she’d learned that. One of the disciplinary committee, most likely, if Seifer was involved. Raijin wasn’t particularly good at keeping his mouth shut when pretty girls smiled at him.

 

Her immediate, instinctive dislike for the girl deepened. Squall’s reaction to her was bad enough, though not actually her fault, but Quistis had a special chip on her shoulder when it came to children who ran away from home. She’d never had a real home to run from. It bothered her when people took that privilege for granted.

 

“If she’s here for Seifer, how come she’s staying even though he isn’t here?”

 

“I have an inkling as to that,” said a low, polished voice at Quistis’ back.

 

She turned around and smiled, holding out her hands to take his in a friendly clasp. “Headmaster Dodonna! You didn’t tell me you were coming. I didn’t expect to see you again for at least a few more years.”

 

“I've told you ten times if I've told you once, it’s Martine to you. And yes, that would have been my preference, but... well. The situation has changed, and continues to change. Things are shifting. I have some, er, concerns. I came to discuss them with Kramer, and I thought it would be best if I didn’t make a specific visit for that purpose.”

 

Quistis frowned. “I’m going to assume my clearance level isn’t sufficient, since you haven’t already told me.”

 

He smiled at her, surprisingly gentle. “No, not at this time. But I can tell you this much: that girl is almost certainly here to petition Kramer for SeeD assistance with Timber’s resistance efforts. She’s making quite a name for herself in some circles, though I doubt she knows that. Surprisingly competent considering her age and background. Remarkably charismatic. If she could get a decent team together she could really do some damage.”

 

Hearing Martine praise her made Quistis feel worse. Her mouth twisted sourly. She didn’t want to be this person, this jealous, resentful mess who could so easily find it in herself to dislike a pretty girl not much younger than she was for... what? Being praiseworthy in areas Quistis fell short in? Getting something Quistis wanted but had no claim to? That wasn’t fair, and she knew it, but all the same she could hardly see through all the green in her eyes.

 

“I thought you were on Galbadia’s side?” she said, in lieu of expressing any of that. They may have exchanged quite a number of letters over the last year, but she wasn’t ready to assume they were that kind of friends just because they were pen pals. If she was wrong, it would be painfully humiliating. She wouldn’t burden him with her feelings about boys unless he clearly indicated that he was interested in hearing them, which was not likely to happen.

 

“I am a patriot, yes,” he said, “but part of being a patriot is recognizing when your country is in the wrong, and the occupation of Timber was never a good idea. It sowed dissent when we most needed unity. That there would be resistance was obvious from the start; Deling’s only options were to crush it utterly or negotiate from his advantageous position, and he has been unable to do the first and unwilling to do the second. He is a fool who has not deserved his position in a very long time. If Timber successfully resists him, it will serve him right.”

 

“I see,” she said, and she did. Politics still wasn’t her forte, but she had learned a lot from him over the past year, and she knew enough to grasp the import of what he was saying.

 

She had heard murmurs of the stirring in Galbadia, had heard about the new power setting foot on stage, though the spotlight hadn’t landed yet.

 

Occupation, unrest, a new player. The political landscape shifting. It would be a good year for SeeD, and for Martine’s ranks of mundane mercenaries.

 

“But I didn’t come tonight to talk your ear off about politics,” Martine said then with a wry smile. “I came to dance with you.”

 

“I thought you came to talk with Cid,” Quistis teased, though she felt the beginnings of a blush creeping up the backs of her ears.

 

Martine grimaced. “That too, but that can wait.”

 

He held out a hand. She gave him hers, and followed him out onto the floor as a new song started.

 

This time she was ready for his energetic style, and kept pace effortlessly. It was a good thing the ballroom floor wasn’t as fragile as it looked.

 

They said nothing to each other while they were dancing, too focused on avoiding all the other couples, but when it was finished they stepped aside and snagged fresh champagne flutes from the trays.

 

“If I might ask,” he said after downing half of his, uncharacteristically diffident, “is everything all right?”

 

She looked up at him and found real concern in his eyes, which was somehow not something she had expected and not something she knew how to react to. “Why do you ask?” she replied stiffly.

 

He winced. “I didn’t mean to imply that you look unwell, it’s just... earlier, when I came up to you, you looked upset. I thought there might be something I could do.”

 

It was her turn to wince. She was really lost here, but she couldn’t just shut him down with the usual wall of ice she turned on the Trepies when they got too forward. He was... not her friend, probably, but he was _something_ to her that deserved better than that. “There really isn’t,” she assured him quietly, “but thank you for offering. I just... I have some maturing to do, I suppose.”

 

He smiled fondly down at her and clicked his glass against hers. “I have every faith in you.”

 

She laughed. “Thank you. I might need that.”

 

“Is it a boy?”

 

Scandalized, she glared up at him and smacked his arm with her free hand. “None of your business!” She sounded like Squall, she realized suddenly, and that made her feel something unpleasant. Squall being Squall-like was the source of her frustrations; she didn’t like the idea that she was making or contributing to her own problems.

 

She was, though, and she knew it.

 

Unpleasant.

 

“It is, then,” he said, a little smug. “I thought so.”

 

“I suppose you’re an expert, then,” she snapped waspishly.

 

To her surprise, that made him draw back and close down. “No,” he said softly. “No, I wouldn’t say that. I’m sorry. You’re right, it isn’t any of my business. I’m not very good at this, as you may have noticed.”

 

“Well, me neither,” she said grumpily, but she could feel herself softening already. “Yes, a boy, and it’s silly. You don’t want to hear about it.”

 

“On the contrary,” he protested. “I couldn’t run a school or dabble in politics without developing a taste for gossip. I won’t laugh at you, I promise.”

 

She believed him. Incredibly, she believed him. So, to her own great amazement, she told him. Not all of it, of course, and not the full depth of it either, but enough to constitute the gist. Her strange, tangled feelings, Squall’s complete unresponsiveness, her inability to give up despite knowing it wouldn’t go anywhere.

 

“If I might give you a bit of advice that I only rarely take myself,” he said when she was finished. “You might find it easier to let go if you set yourself a finish line of sorts. A point of no return. Put it all on the table one last time, and decide in advance that if the results aren’t satisfactory this time, you’ll cut your losses and stop throwing good effort after bad.”

 

She raised one skeptical eyebrow. “You want me to just confess? Outright?”

 

He shrugged. “If that’s what it would take to really get you that closure. I don’t think it has to be that extreme. All that’s important is that you set the conditions and obey your own rules.”

 

Quistis thought about it. This was a time of emotional upheaval for her already, with her demotion and everything, and she didn’t really want to add to it right now... but then, maybe now was the _best_ time, while the ground was already broken. Before she settled into the rut of whatever her new status quo would be. This was a day of change; she might as well make the best of it.

 

“You say you don’t follow your own advice,” Quistis said, “so I really shouldn’t trust it, but I feel a little reckless tonight.”

 

“You’d best catch him before he leaves, then,” Martine said with a nod towards the balcony.

 

She could see a familiar silhouette leaning against the railing, looking characteristically prickly.

 

Quistis reddened. “You might not be good at people, but your eyes are entirely too sharp,” she said.

 

He winked. “I’ve had a lot of practice. Off you go, then. Best of luck. Write me a letter.”

 

Reckless, she’d said. She could be reckless. Just for tonight. She downed the last of her champagne, then on a whim, snagged Martine’s flute out of his hand and polished his off too. Then she handed both of the empty flutes to him and squared her shoulders.

 

It wasn’t going to go well, she could feel it, but she was tired of this. She wanted to draw that line he’d described and hold to it. It was good advice, probably.

 

She’d survive.

 

*

 

Not quite a week later, after Timber

 

*

 

The cadet left her in front of the headmaster’s office, evidently lacking the nerve to knock on the massive wooden door for her.

 

That was all right. She hadn’t really wanted an audience anyway. She knew full well that G-Garden’s students were competent enough to justify their arrogance, having once been one herself, but that didn’t mean she had to like them now any more than she had then.

 

She rapped smartly with her knuckles three times.

 

A familiar voice called out “Come on in, but make it quick.”

 

“I’ll do my best,” she said as she let the ponderous door swing shut at her back.

 

Martine looked up from his paperwork, eyes widening as he realized who it was. Without preamble, he skirted his desk and crossed the room to catch her up in a powerful hug. He let her go almost immediately, and she could tell that it wasn’t something he was used to doing.

 

Gripping her upper arms, he stared down into her eyes. “I am profoundly glad to see you alive and well,” he said, sounding a little unsteady. “After that fiasco at the station... I was able to get some information from my sources, but next to nothing about you or your team. All the focus was on that fool of a boy—”

 

“Seifer,” Quistis supplied dully. The relief of having reached safety was beginning to sink in, and she realized she was exhausted. “His name is Seifer, and I should have seen it coming.”

 

“I don’t see how you could have,” he said. “Come, sit down. I’ll get you some water.”

 

Obediently, she took the seat in front of his desk, and he sat down in his own chair and pushed a tall, foggy glass across to her. The shock of the chill made her feel a little more alert.

 

“I should have, because Xu told me he was mixed up with Rinoa, and I knew he’d broken out of his detention cell, and this is... this is _classic_ Seifer. Swooping in to save the day at the most dramatic moment rather than being there with his shoulder to the grindstone from the start. Of course he couldn’t resist the opportunity to make such a grand gesture. I should have seen it coming.”

 

“Could you have stopped it even if you had?” Martine said gently, reaching out to take her hands. “It isn’t your fault.”

 

“What’s going to happen to him? Do you know?”

 

Martine winced, and from that alone she knew.

 

“Never mind,” she said. “I can guess. Execution. There’s no way they’d let him get away with assaulting the president.”

 

“I’m very sorry,” Martine said, squeezing her hands and then letting go to lean back, creating a little ncessary distance. “I hesitate to say this, it may sound callous, but... it could have been quite a lot worse. He took all the blame, so they classed it as an independent action.”

 

Quistis raised her head, abruptly horrified. “Instead of holding Garden responsible on the whole?”

 

“Yes. You may have heard that the sorceress has had her eye on my facility for quite some time now... this would have been the perfect pretext under which to demand that I lend my forces to a retaliation attempt, thereby forcing me into a difficult choice and getting her foot in the door. We call ourselves politically neutral, but as you know, Deling is a founding sponsor of ours who employs most of our alumni and controls the lands surrounding our campus, so our neutrality is nominal at best. I don't know why she didn't, or why Deling himself didn't, for that matter. Whatever the case, it was a close thing.”

 

The ice cubes in the glass were clinking uneasily, and she realized it was because her hands were shaking. The entire might of the Galbadian army, plus the draft from G-Garden, marching on B-Garden? Balamb and its para-magic advantage might have been able to beat the invasion back, but not without heavy losses. She’d never considered the idea of war landing directly on her doorstep before. She didn’t like it much.

 

“It could have been worse,” she echoed.

 

But Seifer. That was enough of a loss already. She didn’t like him, had never liked him, but she had never denied his gift for violence. If they had been able to shape that, channel it into a less volatile form... but they hadn’t, not in time, and now he was dead.

 

It was natural to grieve, and she had lost classmates and peers on the battlefield before so she knew how it worked, but this hurt a great deal more than she would have expected. Maybe because it felt a little like it was her fault. She curled over, pillowing her forehead on her forearms and feeling the cool wood of Martine’s desk against the tip of her nose.

 

“I truly am sorry,” Martine said.

 

“I’m all right,” she mumbled, “or I will be, in a minute.”

 

After a moment, she felt his hands on hers again, tentative and gentle. He really wasn’t used to comforting people. Wasn’t used to caring about people at all, she thought. The fact that he apparently cared about _her_ was a warm little light inside her that gave her the strength to straighten her back and sit up.

 

“There’s work to be done, isn’t there,” she said. “What are our orders?”

 

He smiled, and this time it was not a kind smile. “It seems,” he said, voice heavy with significance, “we are to assassinate the sorceress. General Caraway of the Galbadian army has contracted with Garden to that effect.”

 

She recognized that name; Martine had mentioned him a number of times in their letters. Like Martine, a patriot without much love for his government. That he would commission the assassination of a clear threat to his country's security wasn't surprising. There was something else in Martine's words that was, though, so she fixated on that for the moment in lieu of letting the import of the rest fully sink in. “You make it sound like someone else is calling the shots on this,” she said.

 

Martine's face became stone for a moment. “Someone else is, yes,” he said. “I can't tell you more than that, unfortunately. I'm sworn to silence. Suffice to say that due to some very ill-advised decisions I made many years ago, when I first founded this Garden as an ambitious and short-sighted youngster with poor character judgement, I am not the final arbiter on matters of deployment. Not always, and not this time. I have received orders to assassinate the sorceress, and furthermore, I am to send a team of my own forces to carry out said objective. Therefore, I have a dilemma.”

 

“Tell me about it,” Quistis prompted. “Maybe I can help.”

 

He regarded her for a long moment. “I have never believed in burdening one's subordinates with one's troubles,” he said, “but in this case, I would appreciate your opinion.”

 

“By all means.”

 

He chewed his lip. “The thing is,” he started, then stopped, and started again. “The fact of the matter is, my Garden makes good soldiers, and good mercenaries. They do very well against most opponents. But they've never fought a sorceress, and as mundane troops meant for mundane wars, they haven't been trained for it. None of them have much experience with magic, even para-magic.”

 

Quistis began to see where he was going. “But we do,” she said. “Balamb's SeeD program places heavy emphasis on it. If there's a sorceress to be assassinated, you should be sending us instead.”

 

“Kramer concurs,” Martine said, waving a letter written in a familiar hasty scrawl. “He gave this to your comrade Fujin to give to me in secret, after the primary orders were delivered. It requests that you be included in the strike team, despite his own orders to the contrary. That way, we have a better chance of success, and if things go pear-shaped, the sorceress will have two Gardens to retaliate against, splitting their forces and giving my Garden a better chance at survival. Of course it would mean countermanding the orders I've been given, which means I'd be relieved of my position at the very least, even you succeeded. Same goes for Kramer. If you failed... I'm sure you can imagine the consequences to yourself and your team, and the sorceress would have an even better excuse to commandeer this Garden and crush yours. I've made many difficult calls over the years, Quistis, but this one....”

 

“Send us,” Quistis cut in without hesitation. “This request should have come to us in the first place anyway. Why didn't General Caraway contract with B-Garden? He knows you're beholden to Deling and the Galbadian government, doesn't he? B-Garden is unencumbered by obligation, better equipped, and has the added advantage of distance. We're much better suited to this than you.”

 

“He and I are old friends,” Martine explained. “I haven't seen him since his daughter was born, but we were very close back in the day. He knew that my personal loyalty is to my country, not its government, and hoped that I would be sympathetic.”

 

“And you were.”

 

“I was. But I didn't expect the order to come to me, either. I passed the request on to my superior, and believed — for all the reasons you just detailed — that they would assign a B-Garden team. It seems I underestimated their sense of self-preservation.”

 

His voice was bitter, uglier than she had ever heard it. She badly wanted to ask who this “superior” of his was, but knew he would protect his vow of secrecy and think less of her for asking him to break it.

 

“Send us,” she said again, softly. “If you want to protect Galbadia and both of our Gardens, it's the smartest choice. I think you know that already.”

 

Martine sighed heavily and crossed his arms. “I do.” He hesitated, and grimaced. “If I'm completely honest, I asked for your opinion out of a selfish desire to ease my heart before I made the call I wanted to make. If I send you and you fail, Quistis, you will die.”

 

“I'm a SeeD, headmaster,” she said, putting emphasis on his rank. “Dying in the line of duty is part and parcel of that. You're making a good tactical call. If it costs me my life, so be it.”

 

“And the lives of your team?” Martine said quietly.

 

Quistis hesitated, seeing Squall's lifeless face in her mind's eye, but steeled her jaw. She knew the answer to this, and it seemed he needed to hear it again, even though he should already know it as well as she did. “The same goes for them. If they weren't willing to risk their lives in battle, they wouldn't be here. Besides, it's not often we get to fight for a good cause like this. Give the order. There won't be any complaints, I guarantee it.”

 

He chewed on it for a few moments longer, then slumped in his chair and visibly gave in. The defeated posture made him look older, by ten years he couldn't afford. “All right. You're right and we both know it, so here are your orders; go brief your team. I'll go acquire the requested sniper and be down to meet you shortly.”

 

He handed her the relevant papers, and she took them with a steady hand.

 

“Roger,” she said, and stood to leave, snapping a clean salute. She had her hand on the door already when she heard Martine stand up behind her and clear his throat.

 

“Quistis,” he said hesitantly.

 

She turned back around and raised an eyebrow.

 

His face was very communicative in that moment; he looked very much like he wanted to call the whole thing off, keep her here where she would be safe, follow his orders and let the sorceress do her worst. Instead, he smiled as best he could and returned her salute; a high honour, considering their respective ranks. “Best of luck. I have every faith in you.”

 

Her chest warmed, but she said nothing, only nodded and let the door close at her back.

 

There was work to be done.

 

*

 

Several weeks later

 

*

 

Fisherman’s Horizon was beautiful, in its own way. She admired the efficiency of it, how it survived so far from civilization with so little to work with because it wasted nothing. Its philosophy she admired less, but then, she was a mercenary. That was to be expected.

 

In the high moonlight of the very late hours — or the very early hours, depending on one’s perspective — the curving silver-blue scales of the solar array glittered. She sat on the ledge and watched the shifting patterns of dim and glow as the clouds passed, trying not to think about anything.

 

The Garden Festival had ended hours ago, and nobody would be interested in cleaning up until tomorrow.

 

The night was full of sound. No human voices, but the town itself was a chorus. The patchwork platform it was built on shifted with the wind and water, creaking and groaning, and she could hear the waves sloshing around the bridge’s massive piles far below. It was a miracle the whole thing didn’t fall into the sea. She yearned for solid ground.

 

“I am,” said a familiar voice behind her, “profoundly glad to see you alive and well.”

 

Quistis leapt to her feet like an unleashed spring and spun around, stunned. Martine stood there in the moonlight, hands clasped sheepishly behind his back, haggard but whole. She threw her arms around his neck and squeezed, briefly, then stepped back, suddenly self-conscious. “I thought you died,” she said. “After all of that.... I heard—”

 

“As it turned out, some few of my students maintained a little loyalty to me on a personal level,” Martine said ruefully. “When she came for my Garden, they smuggled me out and gave me enough supplies to reach Timber. From there, I made my way here, not wishing to stay within easy reach. She knows I’m alive, I’m sure, and she knows by now that my signature was one of the two on that assassination order. I don’t know how long she’s likely to hold a grudge, but wel fight that wel flight.”

 

“Well said,” she said, furtively wiping at her eyes. “We took that advice, too. As you can see.”

 

He turned to look across the town at the ghostly bulk of B-Garden, rising from the docks like an iceberg. “Yes, I see. I had no idea it could do that. I suppose mine likely can, too, as it’s very similar in shape and origin to yours. You had best watch your six, Ms. Trepe.”

 

“Believe me, we are,” she assured him. “So... you’re just going to stay here for a while? Lie low?”

 

“That is the plan,” he agreed. “I haven’t told the good mayor and mayoress much, but they know vaguely who I am, and they fervently disapprove of every life choice I have ever made but they say I’m welcome here anyway. Remarkable people. All I had to do was promise that I’d think about changing my ways, and at this point, I’d be wise to do so. A lifetime of war, and what have I achieved?” He spread his hands like they held an array of photographs detailing his myriad failures. “What have I got left to lose?”

 

Quistis bit her lip, then sat back down on the ledge and patted the spot to her right. Without a word, he gathered up the edges of his tattered coat and sat down beside her, close enough for their shoulders to touch. He looked a little silly, a big tall man in a big blue coat dangling his feet off the edge, but she probably looked a little silly too and there was no one else awake to see it anyway.

 

“Where should I address my next letter?” she asked after a few minutes of companionable silence. “Are you using your real name? Do you even have an address?”

 

He laughed. “I’m camping out in their basement. You could address it to them, care of their freeloader. I don’t think couriers come out here very often, though.”

 

 _I’ll come visit, then,_ she started to say, but closed her mouth on it. The sorceress was out there, aiming for world domination, probably piloting a flying Garden of her own. There was so much work to be done. She had no idea when she’d be back in the area next, if ever.

 

“You could come with us,” she said instead, very softly.

 

Martine started, then regarded her for a moment with a considering look. Then he sighed. “Thank you, but no. Live in your Garden, relying on Kramer’s good graces? He’d be unbearably smug. I’d rather drown.”

 

She laughed and bumped his shoulder with her own. “We could smuggle you in. I know all the best hidey-holes, mostly because I spent a year rooting students out of them at ungodly hours of the morning.”

 

“That isn’t much better,” he pointed out. “No, thank you again for the kind thought, but all told I think I’d rather stay where I am. It’s not ideal, but it’s enough for now. Until I decide what I want to do next. Or perhaps who I want to _be_ next.”

 

“Best of luck,” she said. “I have every faith in you.”

 

He turned to look at her, suddenly very serious and oddly young. “That’s not fair,” he said, “turning my own words back on me.”

 

“Last I heard, turnabout was fair play,” she retorted, but she was smiling.

 

“Someone taught you too well.”

 

“There’s no such thing.”

 

A few more long minutes passed, silent but very comfortable. It wasn’t a cold night, but if one sits still long enough in the absence of the sun it gets chilly enough, so it was natural to press together a little for warmth.

 

“Are we friends?” Quistis asked at last, wincing at how baldly it came out. She immediately considered qualifying it with a lot of things: _I’m not very good at this, you know, I only have one other friend and she didn’t give me room to argue about it back when she decided for both of us, so I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like, normally._ She swallowed them. It spoke for itself, really, that she had to ask at all. That she couldn’t recognize it if it was there.

 

Martine reached over and caught her right hand in his left. He hadn’t been outside as long as she had; his hand was still a little warm. She curled her fingers into his. It seemed no small honour, to be allowed to do that. She had never seen Martine touch anyone else, nor allow anyone else to touch him.

 

“Yes, Quistis Trepe,” he said, “I think we are.”

 

**END**

 


	2. Numbered Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That sequel I promised when I first posted the first chapter. It might actually be longer than the original. Whoops.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains aforementioned kissing, and then some.

Quistis went to the party after the world failed to end, of course. They all did.

She wasn't really sure that any of the others had worked out what she had, though, and that made her feel very alone despite being surrounded by most of the people she cared about in the world, all smiles and laughter. If she asked, of course, she would give away that there was something to work out, and if they hadn't realized, she'd prefer to keep it that way for a while. Let them have their triumph and their celebration.

Rinoa, even through the obviously considerable distraction Squall was offering her, noticed first and quirked an eyebrow at her across the quad, questioning.

Quistis shook her head and made a rueful expression, gave Rinoa a smile that said _It's fine._

Rinoa looked skeptical, but she was too busy at the moment to insist on interfering with something if Quistis assured her it was minor.

Irvine was next, and much less subtle than Rinoa. Slinging an arm around her shoulders, he grinned a bit boozily in her face and asked why she looked so glum when they were having such a tremendous party.

She let him drag her around a bit, participated and faked a few smiles to allay any concerns anyone else might have, then excused herself early and escaped with great relief.

There were students in the great roundabout as well, but not nearly as many or in such high concentration, so even though it was still too crowded for her mood at the moment, it was still a massive improvement on the hectic gaiety of the quad.

Walking with purpose to avoid being stopped for small talk, even though she had nowhere in particular in mind, she made the rounds.

When her feet stopped, she found herself in the vehicle bay.

The Ragnarok had been returned to the Esthar military shortly after they'd returned from the future, though they all had standing permission to request it for any trips they might want to make. Part of the president's gratitude, in public, but Quistis knew it had more to do with Loire sucking up to Squall. Made little difference to her either way, beyond how thinking about Squall having a living parent made her feel.

Oh, she was happy for him. Of course she was. How could she be anything else?

All the same....

Sighing in vexation, she eyed the vehicles available for transport. The Garden was currently circling Balamb Island at a leisurely pace, waiting for its next large-scale assignment. She could borrow a skiff and make for shore, then take the train to where she wanted to go. They were running again, now that the war had been averted and Galbadia's borders had reopened.

It would take a couple of days, where the Ragnarok could have gotten her there in hours. That was a useless thought, though, because the Ragnarok was halfway across the world, safe in Esthar's hangars.

The train it was. She'd need some supplies, though, if she was going to take a trip that long. Of course she could always stock up on the road, but it seemed wasteful when she had drawers full of anything and everything she'd need back in her quarters.

Squaring her shoulders, she turned around and marched out of the bay.

Rinoa was waiting for her in the foyer of the barracks wing, Squall at her side looking less grumpy than usual but rather confused. She patted him on the arm and smiled, and he smiled back. Just a small thing, but Quistis had never seen it before.

She was too tired to have feelings about it, though.

"I know you said it was nothing," Rinoa said even though Quistis hadn't actually said anything at all, at least not out loud. "I'm not calling you a liar or anything, but... are you sure?"

It seemed such a long time ago that Quistis had hated her, resented her down to her toenails. How she had loathed that gleaming girl on the dance floor, that girl who had abandoned her home and her family to fight for a cause that wasn't hers, that girl who had kicked open the door to Squall's heart within five minutes and seemingly without effort.

She no longer felt that way. Rinoa was one of the people she liked and respected most in the world, and Rinoa had earned it. More than earned it. Quistis had spent quite a lot of time talking to Watts and Zone aboard the Ragnarok. She had learned a lot in the process; things that changed her outlook on Rinoa almost as much as Rinoa's actions on the field alongside her had.

Rinoa saw clearly, and she cared, and Quistis liked that about her most of the time. Tonight, though, Rinoa's keen eyes were something of a nuisance. She didn't want to talk about it. She didn't want to explain herself. She just wanted to... go.

"Thank you for checking on me," she said with a warm smile, because she _was_ touched that Rinoa had made the effort. "I'm really fine, I promise. Just need a bit of space and fresh air after all that chaos. I've put in a request for leave; I'll be gone about a week."

Frowning, Rinoa left Squall to take Quistis' upper arms in her hands. "You do whatever you need to, Quistis," she said, "but if we can help you, please promise you'll let us know. Don't pull a Squall."

"Hey," said Squall from behind her, mildly offended though he knew as well as they did that the comparison was warranted.

Quistis laughed. "I promise."

"Okay," said Rinoa with a brilliant smile. "I'll hold you to that. Don't make me tie you up until you talk."

"You say that like you think you could," Quistis retorted archly.

Rinoa raised an eyebrow.

Quistis relented. "All right, you probably could. Especially if you got the others to help you. I promised; let that be enough."

Thumping her on the shoulder companionably, Rinoa winked and went back to Squall. "It's enough for me. That's all I wanted. Come on, we can go back now."

Squall nodded stiffly to her as he and Rinoa departed, and Quistis let out a long, long breath.

Then she went and packed a bag, commissioned a skiff, and drove off across the black waters towards the Balamb docks in the middle of the night.

There was somewhere else she badly wanted to be.

 

x

 

In hindsight, it really would have been wiser to wait for the morning before she set out. The first train for the mainland didn't leave until 0700 hours, and she arrived at 0200, leaving her with nothing much to do but wait.

Checking in at the hotel for a few hours' sleep might have been wise, but the night audit was likely busy with the day's paperwork and it hardly seemed worth the expense.

Instead, after renting a berth for the skiff, she curled up in its back seat and dozed. The gentle waves of the port rocked her to sleep within minutes, even though she hadn't felt all that sleepy. Tired, yes, enough to want rest, but too on edge to sleep. Or so she'd thought.

She woke with the sun. It was a pretty sight, rising over the buildings of the town, painting them red and gold.

Slinging her pack over her shoulder, she checked the authorization lock on the skiff's controls one last time and headed for the train station.

Half an hour later, the train trundled out; she'd barely made it. The next run was in two hours, so it would hardly have been the end of the world, but she was still glad she'd caught this one in time. The faster she got away from Balamb Island and its beautiful, dangerous aquatic satellite, the sooner she might be able to breathe around the weight of what she wasn't talking about.

The trip to Timber took eighteen hours. She spent most of the undersea portion resting, napping periodically. She'd gotten a bit of sleep in the skiff, but not enough, not after what she'd put herself through in the preceding weeks.

A year ago, when she had pictured her life from that time forward, she had seen... reasonable things. Missions, the occasional promotion, until she reached retirement and decided where she wanted to spend her saved-up salary for decades of service. She had a few candidates in mind, but figured she'd wait until she knew what the world was going to be like then to make a final decision. Wait until she knew what _she'd_ be like then.

She hadn't imagined any of this. Sorceresses, the Lunatic Pandora's twisted innards moaning skywards, a moon boiling with red fury, that black castle hanging over the barren lands of the future.

She didn't want to think about it now. Not now. Not yet.

If she'd been in Garden, she would have visited Dr. Kadowaki for a sedative. In their line of work, it was a common request; a visit of five minutes, if that.

Here, there were no sedatives to be had. The best she had were a couple of esuna spells in her stockpile, but those only fixed things that were actually wrong. She didn't think they'd do anything for the malaise that came of seeing a truth no one else did.

She tried anyway. It didn't. Cure didn't do anything either, and she hesitated to use any of its stronger iterations because those tended to make one spacey and giddy in the absence of major wounds to fix. The last thing she wanted was to get high and see visions. The ones in her head were bad enough already.

The train pulled into Timber late in the evening, some time after the sun had set. There was still a cold red glow on the horizon to the west; it was still summer, but only by a thread. Autumn was encroaching, and winter waited snarling in the gates.

She liked Timber. On the surface, it was calm and picturesque, as if nothing bad ever had or ever could happen there. Beneath that blithe skin, however, she could feel the heartbeat of its resistance, even now. Deling was dead, and the sorceress had been exorcised, but the remnants of their policies still lingered on in some branches of the army.

Rinoa was working on talking her father into rooting it out, but General Caraway had been loyal to Deling for a long time, and to Galbadia even longer, and in the absence of a strong new leader he wasn't entirely sure whom to bet on. The parliament were handling things in the interim, but had yet to appoint a new leader, and candidates were thin on the ground. Very few wanted the job of piloting Galbadia back to prosperity and respectability, and even fewer were even remotely qualified for the task.

Privately, Quistis thought Rinoa might end up in that seat, later if not sooner. She was still young, perhaps too young, and she had fought for Timber, which might also be a black mark against her. If she could spin it right, though — and Quistis thought she probably could — she might be able to forge a united continent out of it. Strong trade agreements and a military alliance with Timber, at the least.

In the meantime, the Timber resistance factions continued to resist, quietly but fiercely. Its people were not violent, but they did not stand for oppression. Quistis liked it. If it was still like this when she retired, it was definitely on her list of possibilities.

The train to Esthar only ran once a day, due to the distance involved. Not a lot of people needed to get to Esthar and back on a short-term basis, so it was mostly vacationers, politicians and businesspersons.

Once again, she found herself with a long night to wait out.

This time, she gave up and rented herself a room at the hotel. Fully rested, though, she had no real desire to go to sleep right away, so she went downstairs to the little in-house bar.

It was a classy affair, the same glossy taupe-and-mahogany tiles as the foyer and the same gold and cream paint job, but with dimmer lighting and booths and stools upholstered in a bold crimson. She took a stool at the bar and asked for a treetopper, a local Timber delicacy supposedly made from fruit and the secretions of a certain frog's skin. It sounded repulsive, but she'd heard good things about it. When the barmaid looked at her skeptically, she flashed her Garden identification and scowled.

She was, in fact, of legal age even here, but apparently she still didn't look it. Feeling at her face, she realized that was because she'd left her glasses in her room. It was upsetting that she still needed them. At least she'd had the presence of mind to bring her ID.

in recognition of the fact that Garden soldiers risked far more than their livers on missions, they were exempt from the usual age restrictions. It hadn't always been that way; Gardens had jurisdiction over their students, but making other countries recognize their rules was never so easy. Underage Garden cadets could still get arrested, but at that point they were just extradited back to their home Gardens for discipline, or lack thereof. Local authorities knew that and generally didn't bother anymore.

Sipping at her gin and tonic, Quistis made a face. She had never been among the wilder cadre who went out on the town at every opportunity; her ambitions had prevented that, if she'd ever wanted to. Alcohol was a new and fairly unpleasant experience for her. She had been told that treetoppers tasted fairly mild, in contrast with their fairly spectacular effects, but this tasted like the underside of a rotting log and she wasn't much impressed.

"Well, isn't this an unexpected surprise," said a pleasant tenor at her elbow.

"All surprised are unexpected," she muttered, then frowned and focused. "Zone?"

The man in question grinned and waved at the barmaid, who started making something without a word. His usual, presumably.

She was glad to see him, honestly. A coward, of course, but one with a good head about him.

"Now what might you be doing here at a time like this?" he asked. "It's barely been a week since you got back, and I heard you had one banger of a party last night. Shouldn't you be cooling your heels at home?"

Suddenly, she was less glad to see him. She wasn't really in the mood to explain herself.

Even so, he deserved better from her than the brush-off, so she made herself smile for him. "I'm on leave," she said, and left it there as pointedly as she could.

Zone's thick dark eyebrows crinkled for a moment, then smoothed as he caught her drift. "Gotcha," he said, "say no more. How's our princess doing?"

"Just fine," Quistis said, honestly enough.

"Busy sucking that sad sack's face off, I'd reckon," he mused.

Quistis choked on a sip of her treetopper, and it burned all the way down. "Well," she wheezed when she could speak again, "you're not wrong."

Zone shrugged. "I'm glad. She's just a kid, still, she should be doing kid stuff while she still can. She picked up adult stuff too early. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful — we all are — but she shouldn't have had to step up so early. You know?"

Thinking of her own history — what she remembered of it — Quistis tried to agree, but found she couldn't. She'd been an orphan first, the eldest, and felt responsible for all the other orphans. Then she had been taken in by a family in Deling City, but they had expected a sad, vulnerable little angel they could comfort and nurse through the healing process. Instead, they had gotten her: shrewd, independent, and put off by their well-meant attempts to coddle her.

From there, she had enrolled herself in Galbadia Garden, at the age of eight. Her adoptive parents had taken one look at the hard gleam in her eyes and signed the papers without a word.

She didn't resent them, exactly, any more than she resented herself for not being what they wanted. She just mourned for the home she had almost had.

G-Garden had been comfortable, for a while. She'd liked the discipline, the clear rules; if one was punished, it was because they're earned it, and if one advanced, it was because of one's efforts. Fair. Simple.

Once she learned about the para-magic program at Balamb Garden, though, she had known immediately that G-Garden would never be enough. She didn't want to be a soldier, a faceless one among the faceless many; she wanted to be a SeeD, an elite in great demand from every corner of the world.

She wanted to be wanted, and to be needed, for something only the best could do.

So she had transferred out as soon as she could get approval, and had thrown herself into her studies at B-Garden with all the fervour of a wanderer looking for a place to call home. The youngest SeeD graduate in history, the youngest instructor, the first to do so many things.

It was never enough. Nothing was ever enough. The moment she achieved one goal, she set her sights on the next, twice as high as the last.

Eventually she had been doomed to fail. It was obvious, in hindsight. How it stung, even so.

"Not every child," she said at last, after what must surely have been a rather long and uncomfortable silence, "is well suited to childhood."

Zone huffed a laugh. "Can't argue that."

Feeling oddly better, although she hadn't done anything to ease her mind much, she put her hand on his forearm. "Let me cover your tab," she said.

He winced. "You don't wanna do that, my girl," he said. "I only pay my tab once in a blue moon. I haven't in a while. It ain't pretty."

She thought of all her saved-up salary, sitting mostly useless in her G-cache. After the "saved the world" bonus Cid had paid her and the others, she was fairly certain she could buy the entire hotel — bar included — and still have some left over.

"I'm not in the mood for pretty," she said, and waved her G-card when the cashier brought the console over.

Zone stared at her. "Well, uh, thanks," he said.

"My pleasure," she said. That made her feel better too, for some reason; rendering immediate assistance in a material way that would make a difference to this one life, maybe. Something along those lines. She just felt like helping, even if she knew how things would end up down the line. Standing up, she stretched. "If you'll excuse me, I think I'd better go get some sleep."

"You do that," Zone said with a lopsided grin. "I gotta say, don't think I've ever seen anyone stand up without wobbling after downing a whole treetopper like that. You might have the makings of a real drinker in you."

"I'll keep that in mind, in case my day job doesn't work out," she said dryly, and left.

 

x

 

The train to Esthar was roomier than the intracontinental one that ran between the cities of the west. She suspected that was due both to the fact that people generally spent a lot more time at a stretch in this one, and to the fact that it was built in Esthar.

The people of the east liked their space, and they liked their technology to keep them at a comfortable remove from the more ragged edges of reality.

Quistis had found it unsettling and offputting, in the past, and still did sometimes, but at the moment she thought they might have a point.

She had splurged again, this time on a private cabin so that she could avoid getting to know her seat neighbours in coach. Even for Esthar tech, it was absurdly spacious; there was room to pace, if she felt so inclined, or turn cartwheels, if she were inclined a different way. There was a seat by the window, so she could sightsee if she pleased, and a separate bed behind a curtain-like screen of opaque, shimmery plastic.

Settling herself into the chair, she waited for the train to depart and started thinking about what she'd say when she arrived.

How would she explain why she'd dropped everything and skived off the moment it was socially acceptable to do so? How would she explain the bags under her eyes, the slant of her shoulders?

How would he react?

On second thought, she realized this was not a productive way to spend her time. She'd only work herself up into worse knots if she let her brain loose.

Folding her hands together in a way she'd always used to keep herself calm and composed in situations that were conducive to neither, she fixed her eyes out the window and watched the sun rise over the treetops.

Somewhere not far beyond that lay the shore, and then the seemingly endless track of the bridge, narrowing into nothing beyond the horizon but always broad and reliable under the wheels. Below it, the ponderous, heaving back of the ocean, too massive and dark to really wrap one's head around. She couldn't even wrap her head around how deep she knew it was, even when she compared the measurements to surface points she was familiar with. The distance from B-Garden to the Fire Cavern was close, but when she tried to turn that vertical her brain always refused.

She wasn't afraid of it, exactly, any more than she was afraid of the vast and eternal void overhead, burning with stars that would outlive her and her entire world. It didn't mean her any harm. It just didn't care. It wasn't aware of her, and it could crush her entirely without intent or mercy.

She respected it. That was all.

The journey to Esthar took a week. She was only going halfway, but that was still a full three days and nights on the track, plus a few hours of a fourth day. The view was spectacular, but unchanging except with the sky. Water, as far as she could see and then much farther than that, glimmering a pale gold in the daytime and silver-white in the moonlight, except when it was overcast and it became a dull sheet of mottled tin. The clouds changed, but had no messages for her, even had she believed in such backwater superstitions.

It was, after the first day or so, tremendously boring. She hadn't brought much in the way of reading material, unfortunately, but the on-board kiosk had, so she made a couple of judicious purchases first thing in the morning of the second day and retreated to her cabin before anyone else woke up.

She'd never had much time to read for pleasure; her ambitions had kept her nose in her textbooks even when her classmates were relaxing and catching up on the pop culture of the day. Mentally, she quietly added it to the list of things she hadn't known she'd enjoy and ought to make time to do more often. It was soothing to lose herself in the narrative, leaving her much-chewed upon worries behind for a little while as the train soared silently onward.

Somehow, she suspected there were many more such things still to be discovered. In some ways, she still knew strangely little about herself.

At last, late in the morning of the fourth day, the train slowed gracefully to a soundless halt in the FH station. Stretching, she retrieved her bag and disembarked into a fresh autumn day, the salted wind blowing sprightly and energetic across the beams and panels of the patchwork town.

Steeling her spine, she marched down the long stairs to the mayor's house and knocked on the door.

Flo answered, eyebrows raising as she recognized her visitor. "It's nice to see you again," she said neutrally.

Always so polite, even when staring down those who were the antithesis of everything they stood for. FH was a strange little town. It didn't like her, but she liked it, for the hidden strength of its peaceable backbone among a number of other things.

"Likewise," she said with a warm smile.

Flo frowned. "If you're looking for your friend, he moved out," she said.

Quistis opened her mouth, then closed it and tried to parse that. Moved out? _Gone?_ She'd come all this way and he wasn't there anymore? It felt like she'd been running up a long set of stairs and reached the top only to find that the top two steps were missing, as well as the floor beyond them, and she had nowhere to land and no way to avoid falling.

"Oh, don't make that face," Flo said, sounding almost remorseful. "Let me finish. He's still here in FH, he just found himself a more permanent residence. You'll find him up by the junk collector's. Three doors down the concourse, yellow door. Can't miss it."

The flood of relief nearly knocked Quistis over. "Thank you," she said with all the composure she could muster. "I really appreciate the directions." She hesitated a moment, having turned halfway away from the door already, then cleared her throat and said "Also, um, thank you for looking after him."

Flo regarded her for a long, chilly moment. "There's always welcome here for those who are ready and willing to make a change for the better," she said at last. "I don't expect to see you here anytime soon, but if that day ever comes, you'll be welcome, too."

Oddly touched, Quistis nodded respectfully.

After a brief hesitation, Flo nodded back, then closed the door in her face.

Turning around, Quistis faced the stairs again, uphill this time.

She was tired down to her bones, but she was so close. She could make it just a little farther.

Putting her foot on the bottom step, she started up. One step at a time.

 

x

 

It was indeed very hard to miss. Flo had said "yellow," but Quistis thought that rather unsold things. It was the _quintessence_ of yellow. Bright enough to be visible from across town, if the line of sight were clear.

There was no name plate on or beside the door, so she hesitated briefly, but he had reason to hide his identity and Flo had no reason to misdirect her.

It was almost lunchtime. The day wasn't getting any younger.

Taking a deep breath, she raised her hand and knocked firmly on the door. Three times, spaced a second apart; one for each Garden. An old code only those who had read the manuals would recognize. Or those who had written them.

From inside, she heard the sudden thunder of footsteps, and the door flew open a moment later.

"I am—" said Martine, but his voice cracked and he couldn't finish the sentence she knew he was trying to come out with. _I am profoundly glad to see you alive and well._ In lieu of that he stepped over the high lintel onto the street with her and wrapped her in his arms, heedless of the small crowd of suddenly curious onlookers pausing to watch. His face pressed to the side of her head, he exhaled, a little shuddery with relief.

All of a sudden, Quistis could no longer remain calm and composed. She had held onto it for weeks, as close to flawless as few besides her could manage, and she had made it all the way here without falling apart.

And now she was here, and she had run out of strength.

Burying her face in his chest, she wrapped her arms around his broad torso and leaned into him, on the verge of tears. She couldn't say anything. She couldn't think of anything to say, and even if she had, her voice would have betrayed her. So she said nothing, just stood there in the circle of his arms and let herself begin to fall apart.

Feeling that in her, somehow, he suddenly pulled her inside and shut the door against the onlookers.

She couldn't see much of anything around his bulk, but she had the immediate impression of shabby but spotlessly tidy comfort. A glimpse of polished wooden floor, the corner of an elderly but reliable-looking armchair, a warm shade of yellow on the walls.

"Why yellow," she mumbled, if only to delay the collapse a moment longer. Or, perhaps, just to ease it, make it a somewhat controlled tumble downhill rather than a free-fall.

"Why—" It took him a moment to parse her question, incongruous and sudden as it was. The first words she'd spoken to him since she'd left him at the mayor's house an eternity ago. He gathered himself with admirable speed. "I'm not responsible," he said, dignified to the point of being almost defensive. "The previous tenant left precipitously, without proper notice, so the landlord was willing to rent to me at a lower rate if I took it as-is instead of leaving it empty for a month."

"Oh," she sniffled. "I like it. It's cheerful." Was it a cheerful colour, inherently? Or was it just the reminder of Selphie, who had made her see it that way? In the Garden, yellow was the colour of the vehicle bay, which was not in any way the most upbeat wing of the Garden. "Brooding" described it better. The shadows there, left to themselves so often, seemed to have developed some personality.

Martine carefully sat her down in the soft embrace of the armchair, then went to fetch something to drink. She expected water, as befitted a soldier, but it was warm honeyed milk.

Suddenly, she felt six years old again, surrounded by grey stone walls and the dim, ceaseless roar of the sea. Matron's cooking skills had left much to be desired, but it was difficult to really ruin a recipe with two ingredients (though to be sure, she had done it at least twice that Quistis could now remember). The soft scent of it floating through the halls meant it was almost bedtime.

It was only midday, and she was a long way from the cliff house, but she felt so intensely nostalgic that on top of everything else she was feeling, it was impossible to refrain from crying.

The tears rolled hotly down her cheeks as she accepted the mug and managed to mumble her thanks.

"Now this hardly seems like the face of a hero who saved the world," Martine said gently, lowering himself to sit at her knees with one big comforting hand on her thigh. "Is there something they're keeping out of the news? I don't hear much, all the way out here without my network of eyes and ears."

Taking several deep breaths to stabilize herself, Quistis rubbed fitfully at her eyes and shook her head, wishing she felt more like the adult she knew — theoretically — she was.

"They're not," she said, "but I am."

"Ahh," he said. "I hope you would have come to visit me regardless, but am I correct in guessing that you made such good time because you couldn't bear up under it alone?"

She nodded, letting a fresh wave of tears flood out without trying to swallow them. It might be easier to stay calm if she didn't bother expending effort on that element of things. Let the tears fall as they might, if she could speak clearly enough to communicate. Even just long enough to share the thing she couldn't have shared with anyone else.

"Well, let's have it, then," he said, squeezing her thigh and nodding.

His self-imposed exile had done him good, she realized, having her first real good look at him. His hair had relaxed from its harsh military cut, and his face had filled out a little from its previous gauntness. He was attired in loose-fitting clothes, taupe and dark green, that looked comfortable first and foremost. He looked so much closer to his age without the weight of all those young lives in his hands.

She opened her mouth and took a breath, but let it out again without saying anything the first time, at a loss for words now that it was finally time for them. Her second attempt, however, was more successful. "You may have heard that we defeated the sorceress Ultimecia in her own time," she said, starting there because if he hadn't, there was a lot more to fill him in on first before she could tell him anything else.

He nodded. So that much had reached FH. That was good.

"Her time compression spell unravelled on her death, allowing us to return to this time while she died in hers. All times were the same; it was like finding the right chunk of ice to step on in a thawing river. We managed it, though, as you can see."

"For which I am tremendously glad, as well as grateful," he said, giving her an encouraging smile.

The smile seemed more natural on his face, now, too. Like he'd had practice. She liked that.

"All times decompressed to their proper linear places," she continued, "which means...."

And here she faltered again. How could they not see it? Were they just unable to face it, and so pretended not to? Or did they just find it easier to come to terms with the fact that their best hadn't been quite good enough, and there was nothing more to be done?

Martine was frowning now, the wheels turning in his head.

"You still remember her name, and all of the things she did still happened here in the present, correct?" she said, steadying herself by taking a sip of her milk and focusing on that hand on her thigh. Her skin was so warm beneath it. The milk warmed her insides. She was warm, and safe, and there was a real chance she would live out the rest of her natural lifespan and die in a world still fully intact thanks to her efforts.

A luxury that would not be afforded to her descendants.

"Yes," said Martine.

She could see that he was beginning to see it. Steeling herself, she went on. "Killing her did not, _could_ not change or undo any of her actions in the past. Her past. Did the news say anything about the world of the future?"

"Not much," he said, "except that it was grim."

"The corpses of the resistance were rotting on her doorstep," she said quietly. "We felt the passage of time, but the sun never rose, and nothing grew anywhere. We didn't see anyone else alive. Maybe they were out there, somewhere, but I... I don't think they were doing well, if they were. Even we could tell, just breathing the air, that the world belonged to her."

Martine took several minutes to digest this, his face sinking into the old haggard lines she was so familiar with. She sat up a little so she could put her hand against his cheek. He covered it with his free hand, interlacing their fingers to hold her there a moment before letting her go.

"So what you're saying," he said, slowly, "is that even though you destroyed her, she destroyed the world first, and that wasn't undone by her death."

"Yes," Quistis said, then drew in a huge breath as the constriction of her chest finally eased. She wasn't carrying it alone anymore. He couldn't do any more to fix it than she could, but it meant so much that she wasn't alone with it. "Perhaps there'll be enough of us left for the world to recover after her, but I think it's going to end at least most of the way, and there isn't a thing we can do to stop it now."

His brows furrowed. "But if the future can be changed, as you changed it—"

"That could only have worked while time compression was active," she interrupted miserably. "I thought about it. We could only reach her because she forced her time and our time to occupy the same space simultaneously."

"There are others with power over time," he tried next. "Ms. Leonhart—"

"Ellone is the strongest on record, strong enough that Ultimecia herself needed her power to get far enough back for the spell to work. But all she can do on her own is send consciousnesses back, not bodies. They can observe, but they can't do anything to affect what they see. All of which is moot anyway, because she can only send people back, not forwards."

"I cannot accept that the future is fixed," he said after a moment's frustrated pause. "If it is, then we cannot actually make any meaningful choices."

"I've been breaking my brain on that one since we came back," Quistis admitted ruefully, "and then best I can come up with is that maybe our choices are meaningful, in that we could theoretically choose otherwise and get a different result, but the choices we're going to make are the ones that lead to that future. However smart we try to be about it, we're going to cause it, because we already have."

"I see what you mean about your brain," he said, rubbing at his own temple. "Isn't it still worth a try, though, in case you're wrong and it can be avoided? Perhaps we will forge a new future that steers away from hers. Hers will continue to exist, but so will ours, and in ours there is hope for the world."

Quistis doubted that very much, from everything she had seen and felt of the time stream while immersed in it, but she couldn't bring herself to dash this last, tenuous hope. There was no reason to condemn him to despair. It would do no good, for him or for her or for anyone.

"Maybe," she allowed, in light of that, but did not change her mind.

"Then there is work to be done," he said, back already straightening and shoulders squaring to face it all. "You will help?"

She smiled helplessly. "Of course I will. What better use of my time could there be?"

He clasped her hands between his around the mug of milk, grasping for words. "I am," he said at last, "very glad to have met you, Quistis Trepe."

"The feeling is mutual," she responded, answering to both the obvious statement and the thing beneath it he was trying to communicate without baring its delicate face to the world.

When he looked up at her to confirm from her face that she meant what he clearly hoped he did, he smiled again, the widest she had ever seen from him. It took decades off his face. He still looked older than her, of course — even junior cadets looked older than her sometimes, she had his problem in the opposite direction — but not so much older that she felt at all strange about leaning down over her mug to lean her forehead against his.

He let his breath out slowly, relieved, and closed his eyes.

Drawing back after a few moments' companionable silence, she moved to stand. He helped her up. Draining the last of the milk, which had gone lukewarm, she expelled a breath and stretched her spine until her shoulders sat straighter upon it.

"I'm really hungry," she confessed. "Have you eaten already?"

"I have not," he said. "Would you allow me to take you to lunch?"

"I was going to ask if I could take _you_ to lunch, so yes. We can take each other to lunch."

That got an actual laugh, to her delight. Brief, but real.

"Well, then," he said, disposing of the mug and returning to offer his elbow, "let me show you my town."

"Please and thank you," she said, slipping her arm through it and leaning very gently into his side.

They stepped out together into brilliant autumn sunshine, and a world where all was well. For the time being.

 

x

 

So they had lunch at a little cafe up the concourse from his house, and caught each other up on their respective lives. Quistis had a lot more to tell than he did, which was a reversal of their old dynamic. She wasn't used to doing most of the talking, but his patient listening face smoothed over the initial awkwardness until she was running along at a fair clip as if she'd always been this chatty.

Afterwards, she followed him home.

Or rather, they walked back to his home together, at which point Quistis realized she hadn't really thought any further ahead than this. All that had been in her mind when she had fled Balamb was getting to him and telling him the thing she so desperately needed to tell someone before she burst. After that? No plan whatsoever.

"Uh," she said, standing just outside his door, feeling immensely awkward. "Is there somewhere decent to stay around here? I didn't exactly make up an itinerary before I came."

He hesitated. "Well," he said slowly, "there are hostels down the concourse, and I could recommend the least lousy one to you if you'd like. If you're comfortable with it, however, the simplest solution would be to stay with me. I have spare bedding I could lay out for you."

Gaping like a fish, she scrambled to find words and stammered through the first few until her voice steadied. "I'd— I mean, that would— Would you really be all right with that? After sharing your space with the mayor and Flo, aren't you glad to have your place all to yourself—"

"I am," he said patiently, "but I will be comfortably alone most of the time from now on, and I'm not averse to having guests on occasion. You're a dear friend, and I hate to think of you crammed into a hostel like a canned fish. Besides, then we could talk as long as we like, and I could make you breakfast in the morning."

"You cook?" she said faintly, because that was the only part of that she could respond to.

He scratched his head, looking very nearly bashful. "Well, I try," he said. "I think I've improved. I wouldn't poison you."

"I'd very much like to sample your cooking," Quistis said honestly, "but are you really sure I wouldn't be imposing? I won't take offence, I swear."

Sighing in exasperation, he slid a hand behind her shoulder and physically propelled her past him into the house. She could have resisted quite easily if she'd tried, but truth be told, she loved the idea of staying with him, and hoped his enthusiasm about having her as a guest was as genuine as it seemed.

"I'm in your care, then," she said, laughing.

He looked tremendously pleased, which pleased her in turn.

"What can I do to earn my keep?" she asked then. "Do you have anything that needs doing?"

Drawing himself up to his full — formidable — height, he glowered down at her. "You are my guest, Ms. Trepe," he said sternly, "I am not putting you to work. You've already done more than enough, both for me directly and for the world we share. It will be my honour to look after you for a little while."

That made her blush, unfortunately. She turned around to hide it and tried to decide where to sleep. There was a nice open space towards the back of the large living room, near the sliding door onto the back porch. Beyond that was a precipitous drop, either to a lower level or to the sea itself. That made her a little queasy thinking about it.

"Where should I put my bags?" she asked, once she was sure her face had calmed down enough.

"Come upstairs," he suggested. "There's a little room I've been using as an office. I think you'd be most comfortable there."

Obligingly, she followed him up the creaking wooden steps to the office, which was indeed quite cozy and charming. It had a nice big window to let in the light, but it was high enough on the wall that she couldn't see the drop unless she went right up to it. "I like it," she said.

He beamed. "I'll fetch the bedding. You won't be sleeping for some time yet, I imagine, but best to get the little details out of the way so we don't have to deal with them later when we're tired."

Humming to himself, he bustled off.

She had never seen this side of him.

Admittedly, she hadn't seen many sides of him, considering that most of their relationship thus far had been via written correspondence rather than in person. She had seen him in his role as Headmaster, and she had seen him as a disgruntled unwilling party guest, and she had seen him as a dishevelled exile searching for a new path in life, but those only made up a fraction of what he had within him. She was sure of that.

Here, he was almost a different person; softer, gentler, practically domestic. A year ago, she would never have imagined him _bustling_ anywhere, for any reason, but in this context it didn't seem out of place at all. This was his home, his comfortable space, and he was happy within it, and he wanted to share it. With her.

She sat down at the desk and let out a long breath.

It suddenly seemed surreal that she was actually here. Or perhaps _this_ was what felt real, after weeks of dissociation back at Garden. Either way, it felt strange. All that pent-up misery, that precipitous midnight flight, then... this. Sunlight through the high window, warm oak scored and stained by years of pens and letter openers and leaky mugs, the soft nameless scent of someone's home. Martine's home.

There were papers tidily stacked in a metal tray to the left. Not very many of them. That made sense; what papers would he have need of here? Receipts and tax forms and letters, that was all. Nothing like the steady tide he had handled as headmaster of a massive military school. Clearly, he had retained his old habits, though; everything had its place, so that he would always be able to quickly locate anything as it became immediately pertinent.

To her right was a painted jar full of pens and pencils and quills and scissors, all decent quality but not so expensive as to stand out against their surroundings. The best this little outpost in the middle of the ocean had to offer, most likely.

There were maps on the walls to either side of the desk, but they were clearly decorative more than functional, beautifully illustrated. There was one of the world that took up most of the wall to the right side of the desk, and to the left were more detailed maps of Galbadia, Timber, Dollet, and Balamb. None of Trabia, Centra, or Esthar, but that too made sense. Trabia was little but snow, ice and dragons now that there was no longer a Garden there, Centra was still the blasted desert it had been since the last Lunar Cry before the most recent one, and who knew where anything was around Esthar with all that cloaking technology?

The one of Timber was particularly beautiful. It was framed on both sides by painted trees, the great grey valleybarks the area was famous for. The foliage was picked out in loving detail, a hundred shades of green. If she looked closely, there were squirrels and birds among the branches. Each landmark was drawn onto the map as if seen from the top of a hill nearby, intimate but recognizable at a distance. Not mathematically accurate, of course, but more useful in many ways than a "perfect" map might be.

Her own quarters back in Garden were decorated in a rather similar fashion, though she had somewhat more spartan taste overall. Perhaps when she retired, she might relax a bit and end up with something more like this.

"Here we are," said Martine's muffled voice from behind a massive armful of bedding. He dropped it on the floor with a thump, shouldering her politely out of the way to arrange it into a tidy bedroll between the bookshelves and the desk.

There were no fewer than four pillows in there, she realized with amusement. At Garden, she slept with only one, tucked under her neck to preserve her posture.

"Will this be comfortable enough?" he asked, frowning at it.

"More than enough," she reassured him. "More comfortable than the barracks, actually."

He barked a laugh. "I suppose so. I was afforded few luxuries as headmaster, and availed myself of even fewer, but I did acquire a rather nice bed for myself. I still miss it. If I could have carried it on my back all this way I might well have chosen to take it with me."

It was her turn to laugh, at that frankly absurd but endearing mental image.

"Now, then," said Martine. "I'm sure you're not ready to turn in just yet, are you? What would you like to do for the rest of the day?"

She hadn't really thought about it. Thinking about it now, she came up rather blank. Explore the town? She'd already done that, last time, and doubted so much would have changed as to make a fresh run interesting. Go for a walk, just for the exercise, after all the sitting she'd done on the way? Could be nice, she supposed.

"I don't know," she said honestly after a few too many beats of silence. "What is there to do around here? What do you recommend?"

He made a face. "How do you feel about fishing?"

She made a face very similar to his. "I'd rather not, except at need."

"I thought as much," he said, nodding as if confirming that to himself. "I enjoy it, personally, on some of the nicer days, but it's not very engaging. How about solar panel repair?"

She shook her head. "I don't have the expertise, though I'm willing to learn," she said, "but that sounds kind of monotonous."

He frowned. "What do you do with your spare time in the barracks?" he asked. "Surely you have hobbies."

That she certainly did.

"Well," she said awkwardly, "I like to play cards."

His eyes narrowed suddenly. "Triple triad? Are you any good?"

Offended, she drew herself up and glared a bit. "Any good? I'm the king," she said, then realized he wouldn't have any idea what she meant by that. "I mean, um. At B-Garden, we have a secret card club, and the higher-ranking members get titles. Jack, prince, joker, and so on. Rankings are determined by win/loss ratios."

"So as the king, you are..."

"The best," Quistis supplied with a little more pride than she'd meant to. "I mean, of the B-Garden students, for what that's worth. I'm sure there are lots of masters out there in the world who could demolish me."

Martine grinned. "Well, I wouldn't call myself a master," he said, "and I haven't played in quite some time, so I'll beg your patience, but I do have a deck and I think a few games would be just the thing. Until you think of something better to do, at least."

Leaning down, she drew her own deck out of her bag, and spun it around her hand with a neat flourish. It wasn't all that impressive, considering, but it always made her a little happy to feel it thump back into her palm after a successful manoeuvre.

Raising his eyebrows, he leaned past her to his desk and retrieved his own from the top left drawer. It was just as thick as hers.

She stared, feeling the beginnings of a broad smile working their way outwards across her face. It had been a while since she'd last had a truly decent challenge. Well, there had been Squall a month or two ago, but somehow that hadn't been as satisfying as she might have hoped. He didn't love the game like she did; he was just very good at it, and understood how useful it was.

"Oh, I'm looking forward to this," she murmured under her breath, and followed him down the stairs to his table, which was mostly just a broad sheet of half-polished wood artlessly balanced on four rough legs.

Wordlessly, he gestured her to the far end, and grasped the corners of his end. Together, they flipped it over, and she realized that there was a field drawn neatly on the reverse side. There was also a little bag of element markers pinned next to it, in case anyone wanted to play with that rule despite the location.

"How did I not know you played?" she wondered out loud. "All this time...."

He shrugged. "I didn't know you played, either," he pointed out. "It simply never came up. There are probably a number of things like that still there for us to discover about each other. I think it takes quite a lot of time to really get to know someone, and we haven't had as much as it feels like we have."

"Letters are something," she admitted, agreeing, "but they're not... this. I guess we have some lost time to make up for."

Taking his seat, he spread his deck out in front of him and began contemplating his hand. "Indeed we do, my dear," he said, smiling.

She took her own seat and mirrored his actions, feeling the familiar thrill of a game gearing up. How would this play out? What would his style be like? What cards would he have, and what were the stories behind his rarer acquisitions? There were suddenly a hundred more things she wanted to know about him, and so little time to ask.

Pausing, she realized that that wasn't entirely true. She had applied for two weeks' leave, but she had quite a bit more than that banked, to be taken at any time. Now that Adel's endless howling was no longer blocking radio signals, wireless communication systems were getting back online after seventeen years of silence, and the Gardens were at the forefront of the efforts to restore international connectivity for obvious reasons. It should be easily possible to contact Garden and ask for an extension, if she felt so inclined. Fisherman's Horizon was a young town, but not so young that it didn't have any broadcasting facilities.

"Martine," she said.

He looked up, quirking an eyebrow, most of his hand apparently already decided upon.

"I think I might want to stay in FH for a while," she said. "A vacation, I guess. I've never taken one before and I think I'm probably overdue. You just kick me out whenever you need your space back, all right? I'll understand, and I won't mind going to the hostel. I promise."

He rolled his eyes, which was by far the youngest thing she'd ever seen him do. "Don't be ridiculous, Quistis," he said. "I'm delighted to have you here. You're welcome to stay as long as you like. I somehow doubt you'll be a troublesome house guest, outside of beating me viciously in cards."

"I really don't want to impose," she insisted.

"Quistis...." he began, then sighed and put his cards down. Standing up, he circled the table towards her.

Unsure of what he wanted, she stood up too, so that he wouldn't have to look down at her so far.

When he reached her, he took her face very gently between his battle-callused hands and looked straight into her eyes. "I think perhaps you ought to know," he said so softly it was nearly a whisper, "that I love you very dearly, Quistis Trepe. You will always, _always_ be welcome in my home, wherever I am and whatever it looks like. Am I clear?"

Blinking back sudden, startled tears, she managed to nod.

He smiled. "Good. Now, shall we get on with our game?"

"I'd like that," she said, but caught his arm as he turned to return to his seat. "Martine," she said, as softly as he had, "I hope you know the feeling is mutual. I mean, I've had a strange life and I can't honestly say I know for sure what love is, but I can't think of anything else that this could be, so I'm going with that until further notice." She was almost babbling, she realized, so she shut her mouth tight and bit her bottom lip to keep it shut.

Martine was silent for a long moment, but when she risked a glance up at his face, she realized that he wasn't startled or disbelieving. He was simply wrestling with himself over what to do next.

Once again, she had the opportunity to take a difficult decision out of his hands, and so she did. Reaching up, she pressed a hand to the side of his face, sweeping a thumb over his cheekbone.

When he looked down to meet her eyes, cautious and anxious, she dipped her chin half an inch in firm assent, and stretched upwards on her toes to meet him coming down.

For a man who had lived a lifetime of war, kissing a woman who had lived a similar if shorter one, he was strangely gentle. Though it wasn't strange to her, now; she had seen this gentleness a number of times, and it was part of why she cared the way she did. The strength to do what was necessary, combined with a heart so tender as this... he was a rare person, and she felt privileged to have been allowed to see that truth about him.

She, however, was not so gentle, though she had learned something of it over the years. If he was the tranquil of a river past the rapids, she was the turbulence of the stony bends, all haste and power tearing at the banks. She didn't want gentleness. The world was ending, whether it knew it or not yet, and she couldn't save it, and the terrible pain of that would never let her rest in contentment so long as she lived.

She wanted hunger and urgency, the desperation of life to affirm itself in the face of destruction. So she bit his lip with enough force to sting, if not to draw blood just yet, and in his brief, startled pause she felt the shift. He understood, now, and he could answer that if it was what she needed.

Pressing her close to him with one hand on her lower back and the other buried in the golden hair at the back of her head, he leaned down to answer her hunger with his own. He pushed her backward until they reached the wall, then pressed her into it with his full weight, giving her no escape unless she asked for quarter.

She didn't. She braced herself against it and used the leverage to wrap her legs around his hips.

Shuddering, he groaned.

It occurred to her to wonder how long it had been since he had last indulged himself. Out in the middle of the desert, surrounded by children, it must have been very difficult to find opportunities. Had he found anything here in FH, in exile? Or had he simply locked that part of himself away and paid it no heed for years or decades?

Now was not a particularly good time to ask, however much she wanted to know. If she interrupted him to ask for stories and statistics, he would assume she was politely trying to deescalate the situation, just as she would assume in the same position.

Resolving to ask later, she set her curiosity aside in favour of learning everything she could from what new things he was giving her.

She learned, for instance, that he had a scar on the side of his neck that looked like it had very nearly opened an artery when it was fresh. It was not new, at least a decade old, but the flesh still looked pink and shiny and a bit stretched. She traced it with a finger, and when he shivered, she broke away from the kiss to press her mouth to it, tracing it again with the tip of her tongue.

This time the shiver was three times as strong, and she felt a wobble that might be his knees threatening to give out.

"Do you have others?" she murmured against it.

"Yes," he said hoarsely, "many."

Slipping her fingers under the collar of his plain shirt, she caressed what she could reach of his shoulders. "Where?"

Making a low sound in his throat, almost another groan, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled them both away from the wall towards the unobtrusive orange couch. Letting her down on her back with him kneeling over her, he drew away to pull his shirt over his head.

There were at least three more sizable scars on his torso, and one on the underside of his right arm. She could guess that there would be more on his back and legs.

"Why so many?" she asked, reaching out to touch them lightly, enjoying the way his skin twitched and shivered wherever her fingertips passed.

He shrugged. "I've never been one to lead from the back, and being in my profession, in Galbadia, I have been subjected to a number of assassination attempts. Clearly, I have not succumbed, though some made a good try of it."

Frowning, she wondered if Cid suffered the same. He had no combat ability to speak of, so it would be impressive if he had managed to survive what had made so many marks on Martine.

"In case you're wondering," he said then, as if reading her mind, "it's only because I led the Garden in Galbadia, which has been in a state of perpetual unrest for decades. As the leader of a dangerous force interfering frequently in the conflicts between Galbadia and its neighbours, I was a thorn in many sides. Balamb is in a very different situation, and I don't believe Cid leaves the Garden very often even so."

"So it's just you," she echoed sadly. "This might be an awful thing to say, and if so I'm sorry, but I'm glad you got out. I hope you never get another one of these."

"I have fewer than some of those I've taught," he said quietly. "I'm sure you have your own collection."

Recognizing that invitation for what it was, Quistis wriggled out of her own top. She was not virginal, or even close; she had taken care of her body's demands with utilitarian efficiency fairly regularly since they had become an issue, taking leave in Balamb town for a day or two when necessary. Many, if not most of Garden's older students did the same, if they didn't feel like fraternizing within their own ranks. She was not embarrassed to be naked, or to be touched, and she knew what she liked for the most part.

This felt so different as to almost be another beast entirely.

This wasn't some stranger or acquaintance at the Balamb hotel bar, no tourist or travelling businessperson she'd never see again and cared nothing for. This wasn't about satisfying the needs of her body. Or at least that wasn't the whole reason.

This was Martine, her dearest friend, whom she loved. He was touching her like he was amazed to have the privilege. She felt more vulnerable than she could remember being since she had asked Squall to accompany her to the secret place in the Training Centre. Out on a limb, with a dizzying drop below.

Reaching up, she pulled Martine down to her and hung on for dear life.

 

x

 

When Quistis woke up, Martine was gone.

For a moment, an awful anxiety rose in her chest, and she drew the blankets up to her chin to shield herself. Had she done something wrong? Did he regret it? Was he sitting downstairs, trying to think of a polite way to ask her to go home and leave him be?

It didn't fit with what she knew of his character, or what he had shown her of his feelings for her, but she could not seem to pull the deep taproot of anxiety all the way out. Squall had left a deeper mark than she had realized. She _expected_ to be rejected, now. She expected to put her heart on the line and be disregarded.

Taking three deep, deliberate breaths, she rolled out of bed — his bed, she remembered with a soft thrill, not her bedroll in the other room — and performed her morning ablutions with customary care. She was an early riser, generally speaking, but apparently not quite as early as Martine was. Even though he had no students to wrangle anymore, no mountains of reports on an expensive desk, it seemed he had kept military time. Perhaps it came naturally to him, or perhaps he found it comforting to be awake before everyone else in the way she often did.

Being up first made it so that anything that was going to happen would only do so when she was ready for it. Things did happen in the middle of the night sometimes, unexpectedly, but the larger part of the daily chaos of a large institution occurred during waking hours. She always felt one or two steps ahead of things when she got out ahead of it like that.

She realized she'd been brushing her teeth for several minutes longer than necessary, putting off the next step. She rinsed her mouth and squared her shoulders and descended to the main floor with careful steps.

Martine was indeed sitting at his table, nursing a mug of something that steamed and staring at nothing in particular. There was a plate of eggs and greens on the table in front of him.

There was a second one across from him, and an empty mug with a ceramic teapot emitting a thin stream of steam from its finely worked spout.

"Good morning, Quistis," he said, turning to smile at her as he heard the stairs creak under her. "Did you sleep well?"

For some reason, she was blushing again, though only lightly. He hadn't said much of anything. Perhaps it was the sudden flood of relief running through her, or the warmth in that smile, or both. He wasn't upset. She'd eat her field boots if he was; her ability to read people was better than that.

"I did," she said, "wonderfully, actually. Better than I have in a long time. I think I really needed this."

His eyes gleamed for a moment, and her blush deepened.

"I'm glad to hear it," he said. "Breakfast?"

She crossed the floor to take her seat, surveying her plate with open pleasure. "How long have you been up? I didn't even feel you leave, and I'm the lightest sleeper I know."

He shrugged. "Not long. An hour and change. I can move quietly when I choose."

"I'm sure you can," she said, thinking of all the covert warfare situations that must have been useful in. Those forests around Timber... anyone who could move through those without alerting nearby enemy combatants to their presence would be invaluable. She didn't know how often he had taken to the field himself — a good general was supposed to stay out of harm's way so as to protect the chain of command — but she was very sure he had seen more than his fair share of frontline warfare.

The scars told her that much.

With effort, she schooled her face to calmness instead of letting the blush get any deeper. It was difficult, though. She couldn't seem to stop thinking about how his scars had felt under her fingers, how he had shivered whenever she kissed one. He had so many. It was often said that having many scars was the mark of a poor soldier, one who was not good enough to avoid getting hurt often, but she knew that scars happened even to the best, and happened more often when they walked into dangerous situations to spare someone else from having to do so in their place.

Distracted, she put the first forkful of breakfast into her mouth, and was abruptly distracted from her distraction. "This is delicious," she said, trying not to sound surprised even though she was. "What's in it?"

He winked. "Secret. I've been forced to develop hobbies, you know, being suddenly rendered irrelevant to the world at large. Cooking for myself is one thing that has been surprisingly enjoyable."

Quistis grimaced. "I can't cook to save my life," she said, "let alone anyone else's. My foster family didn't let me anywhere near the stove, and once I went to Garden... well. I'd be surprised to learn any SeeD could cook, unless they enrolled very late."

"If you like," said Martine, "I could teach you the basics while you're here. It's a useful skill, and I find it soothing."

She pondered for a moment. "I don't know when I'd ever get to use it," she said ruefully, "but sure, if you'd like to. It's always better to have knowledge than not, right?"

"A Tot quote?" he said with a delighted grin. "You must have spent some time in the library."

"Some," she said, "but not as much as I'd like to from now on. I got that from Dr. Kadowaki. Apparently he's an old friend of hers."

His eyes widened. "Really? I may have to come visit and have a little chat with her, if that's the case. Tot's writings have been a great influence on me over the course of my life. I should very much like to talk to someone who knows him on a more personal level."

"Well, you know you're always welcome," she said, cheered by the idea of him visiting between inaugural balls.

Pleased, Martine nodded and returned to his breakfast.

They ate in companionable silence, then washed the dishes with easy teamwork.

Quistis felt almost like an entirely new person.

Just a day ago she had been a miserable wreck, burdened with an open secret too big for her, yearning to share it but terrified of the consequences of the wrong people knowing it.

She had saved the world, and come home exhausted, only to find herself unable to relax into its reassuring permanence. The fact that it was floating around on the ocean instead of occupying the piece of land it had lived on for decades was part of that, but the larger part was just knowing that it would all end someday. SeeD would continue for a while, but it _would_ end with corpses in white and grey on the stony shore at the Cape of Good Hope. What a tremendously ironic name that seemed now.

Now, though, while that impending doom still seemed just as visible on the horizon for her, she also saw all the long years of sunlight that lay between here and there as well. They weren't negated by what would come after. They would happen, and there would be so much goodness in them.

What she had seen in the future no longer seemed like such a permanent ending. True, they had seen no other living creatures while they were there, but surely SeeD had not existed all by itself. Surely they would arise just as they did in the current day: from a population large enough to spare some sons and daughters.

She could ask where that population was, and how it was doing, and those would be fair questions, but those White SeeDs lying dead on the doorstep were not the last of humanity. Now, fully rested with a full belly and good, level-headed company, that was easier to believe.

Perhaps they were in hiding, forewarned by the knowledge passed down from this generation. Certainly they had all made detailed reports for the archives, and knowing Cid, those reports would inform future decisions a long way down the road.

It might not be possible to stop what was going to happen — another irony was that the only reason they had been able to defeat Ultimecia where and when they did was her own power over time, which they could no longer use for obvious reasons — but it might be possible to let things happen as they had to while saving more than it seemed like they were saving.

There was room for mitigation. Room for her to breathe.

"Thank you," she said out of a long silence as they put away the last of the dishes.

Martine turned to her, frowning. "For what?"

She spread her hands, searching for words. "For... giving me what I needed to find hope again," she said, wincing at how vague it sounded. "I was in a bit of a dark place yesterday, but I feel much better today, and I wouldn't if not for you. So, thanks."

He drew a breath, let it out slowly through his nose, then walked over to her and enveloped her in a hug.

It wasn't anything more than that. Morning people they might both be, and she could easily see things taking a turn for the prurient before and/or after breakfast time now and again, but not today. This was just comfort between friends, pure and kind. He rubbed her back and pressed her face into his shoulder and said nothing.

She wasn't sure what, if anything, she would have expected him to say. He had already told her she was welcome, and that amounted to much the same thing.

Wrapping her arms around his hard waist, she sighed and closed her eyes and let the healing darkness soothe her.

Coming here had been the right decision. However precipitous, however absurd, it had been the right call for her. She _had_ needed this. All of it. The easy conversations, the hard conversations, the bedroll she had yet to sleep in, his hands and his mouth and his arms. She had needed all of this, and she didn't feel at all ashamed of that, as she might have a year ago.

She had grown so much. Learned when to carry things alone and when to share them. Learned it watching Squall, much of the time, because he had needed the lesson even more sorely than she had and had been taught it even more painfully.

Drawing back after a couple of minutes, she smiled up at him. He smiled back down at her, with that smile that so transformed his face.

"Thank you," she said again, and meant it even more this time. "I'm so glad we're... this." _Friends,_ she had started to say, but that didn't seem to quite cover it. _Lovers_ seemed even more narrow, covering even less of what she wanted to convey.

She was glad they were whatever they were, whether there was a name for it or not.

"So am I," said Martine softly.

Standing there in his kitchen with the lingering scents of breakfast and dish soap sweet around her, the future seemed — if not bright — at least uncertain.

Enough so for hope.

**X**

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot believe this is my first FFVIII fic ever. I've been a fan for almost seventeen years, and have been writing fic for eleven, but somehow this ridiculous thing is the very first. Maybe now that I've broken the ice I'll get around to writing something more serious. One can hope, anyway.


End file.
